What about FF x-2. Come on. We all knew that sucked. I almost went number 2 in my pants.

Still Ogre Battle, a feel like real time rpg strategy game was all I needed for the N64.

I feel FF suffers from the same issues Resident Evil does(Not updating dated gameplay). I know I am a minority but the article the other day talking about the massive amounts of cut scenes and how insane the story is... The Kotaku story was well written and I agree with all of it

http://n4g.com/News-449313....

The controls are dated. Cut scenes are not needed and the protagonists are literally just... WTF. I would just rather play a game then watch a game. I watch a movie... not a game... Hence why I disliked MGS as well(I'm a huge PS3 fan so don't hate I just dont like MGS)

Honestly most of the impressions I have read have been a mixed bag or just serious hype... Either way... I have been pushed further and further from the JRPG and RPG genre in general anymore(Demons souls being my exception... If you consider it an RPG anyway)... I like a good story to my games but I like more game then story...

To each his own though. The number of folks who favor the game(Or series rather) greatly outweigh people like me who are just tired of it and think it should have been "final" about 5 games ago...

I agree with a lot of your points. From a personal perspective, I won't say I enjoy the series as a whole, but more or less a handful. To me, Square Enix has produced far better titles in the RPG genre than what they have milked with the Final Fantasy series (e.g. Xenogears, Radiata Stories, Secret of Mana, etc.).

But, sadly, the Final Fantasy name itself doesn't need anything but prettier visuals and the name to drive sales since it has such a gargantuan number of followers.

I wouldn't say that the controllers are dated as much as I would say that the controllers themselves, from generation to generation, haven't really made such a leap until the Wii. Innovation promotes new plateaus of design, and if you're stuck with the same thing year after year, you're pretty much going to work with what you've got. In my opinion, if something works, improve on it - and with almost every iteration of Final Fantasy games, they make minor adjustments to the overall combat system (Final Fantasy XII, however, had a unique combat system which I loved). Bringing back Xenogears, I enjoyed the newly introduced *working* combo system on an RPG in the PSX era.

Cutscenes are placed to provide a cinematic experience. Back in the day, they didn't have the technology they have today to bring us this form of storytelling. Instead, we were exposed to programmed sequences that took the sprites we saw onscreen and made them perform something cinematic-like (i.e. being pushed off a ledge or something) with text. Today, it's basically the same thing with a much more appealing facade. Is it needed in ALL games? Absolutely not. But if that's the way that the developers can provide us with an evolving story, then by all means.

Games are a stagnantly evolving art form. Developers DO need to take chances in their games in order to provide us with fresher much more appealing experiences. With that said, Jinx, you brought up some great points.

Everyone else had moved on, but for RPG fans there were still some quality titles hitting the PS2, including FFXII and Persona 3 and 4, among others.

As far as FF and the article above goes, I do agree with the overall conclusion of the article, but I don't really think the stories in this particular franchise have suffered because of overdone visuals to the point of being horrible. There hasn't been a regular, numbered FF title to date that hasn't sucked me into the story, first and foremost. I enjoyed FFXII because the story was different, more mature, political and intellectual, if you will. All the whiny little Cloud wannabes didn't like it because it wasn't what they were expecting. Their loss. ;)

Now, from what I'm hearing FFXIII is pretty linear in the first 20 hours or so, but that doesn't bother me because with Eastern RPGs they have a story to tell you and you follow the story at their pace and the way they want you to. That's par for the course with this style of console RPG, so it should be expected. Sometimes it's less linear than other times, it just all depends.

I'm definitely looking forward to March 9. :)

@ Joel

Of course you would say nice read. Its from your site. That's borderline spam buddy.

To me, Final Fantasy ended with X. Everything they've done since then has been pretty bad.

Haven’t watched it . Is it not good ?